Christmas Gifts: Cloth Dolls

Do you ever finish a project and then straight away look for the flaws? I always do. It's a really horrible trait, and not something I do to other people, but when it's my own work I immediately search for the imperfections. The bit that could have been neater, straighter, better. And once I've found it I can see nothing else. 

It gets you no-where, thinking like that. 

If you look closely, you'll see that the left arm on both dolls does not sit as neatly as the right. It should have been tucked in more before I stitched over it. But do you know, I honestly don't care, and I don't think the recipients of these dolls will either. I made them for my nieces, Jennifer and Eleanor, aged five and three. They won't notice and I hope they will like their Christmas presents and just play with these dolls and drag them around everywhere and take them to bed, getting them dirty in the process and they'll end up in the washing machine a few times, as all well-loved toys inevitably do.

No, I am proud of these. I am proud of my careful machine stitching around the hair and hairband, something I wouldn't have been able to do a few months ago. I'm proud of how I made the seams on the leggings and shoes line up so neatly. I love the colours and patterns and their sweet smiling faces and the way they feel when you hold them - soft, but heavy too, as rag dolls should. 

I wanted to make them essentially the same, but different, to avoid competition and squabbles. Sisters eye up what the other has and look for advantages and differences - I should know, I am one of three girls. Both girls are brown-eyed red-heads, and so the dolls are too. 

I used acrylic crafting felt for the hair, hairbands, leggings and shoes. The arms, legs and face are made from some plain off-white cotton fabric I bought in Ikea, and for the bodies I used scraps of Liberty print in Betsy D and Betsy J, a pattern I adore and come back to again and again. I buy small amounts and use it very sparingly. 

The pattern is written by Laura Hunter and is from an old copy of Mollie Makes. (That subscription just keeps paying for itself!) You'll find it in issue 14, and I thought it a really good pattern to work from; clearly written and easy to follow, plus the dolls are not too small which helps avoid horribly fiddly turning-the-legs-the-right-way-out moments. Laid out flat they look like this and measure 43 cm or 17 inches from head to toe. They look a bit like they're in a morgue in this photo, don't they, laid out flat on a white sheet. They just need a tag on their toes.

I finished these dolls last week, but have been waiting for a good day to photograph them. The light seems to be either too gloomy or searingly bright, neither of which is very helpful. Annie wrote recently about the difficultly of taking photographs during the winter months, in particular the lack of daylight, and the challenges it brings. Some things - like food - just don't look so good when photographed in electric light, but I want to continue to share my life and creative endeavours (both the edible and non-edible sort!) here in this space and, for me, that means photos as well as words. So I'll just have to continue to improve my photography skills. I like a challenge.

Thank you for sharing all your Christmas traditions with me. What a great response! It seems the trend in North America is to begin the festive decorating around Thanksgiving, whereas here most of us decorate the tree mid-December.  I think there is something really romantic and traditional about putting up the tree on Christmas Eve, as people used to do, and keeping it there until 12th Night. But my own children would never stand for that, and I know that I want to enjoy the period before Christmas as much as the time after, and so I'll put mine up a couple of weeks before the big day and take it down on New Years Day, which always seems a nice way to mark the end of festivities and the start of a fresh new year.